Mele Kyari, group chief executive officer of Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has declared that the petrol pump price of N170 per litre in Nigeria is no longer sustainable.
The Cable newspaper reports that Kyari said this on Wednesday, November 9 while delivering a keynote address at the legislative transparency and accountability summit organised by the House of Representatives committee on anti-corruption.
He said market conditions have pushed the cost of landing petroleum products to about three times the value of the current pump price.
“It is not possible for you to buy fuel at N170 when your actual cost is thrice that value. For instance, today, when PMS comes into this country, we transfer to marketers at N113 per litre for us to ensure N165 at the pump.
So, you must sell at N113 to them to be able to deliver at N165, that means whatever the cost, anything after that value; that is subsidy. Somebody has to pay for it.
“Everyone knows the price of PMS around the world. There is nowhere today that you can land a litre of PMS to the pumps at the N445 (to $1dollar) exchange rate. It is not possible.”
The NNPCL boss also said the subsidy cost for petrol is about N290 a litre in some parts of the country.
According to Kyari, subsidy costs gulps about N19 billion a day, using the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority latest consumption figure of 66.8 million litres per day.
He said with the current subsidy on petrol, vices including document forgery and cross-border smuggling, were inevitable.
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